


Foot in Mouth

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even her Maid of Honor duties can't keep Jemma Simmons from noticing the bride's gorgeous brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foot in Mouth

“Holy shit crap mother fucking hell.”

Most people would have raised a brow at the words that just came out of Skye’s mouth, but after nearly a decade of friendship, Jemma isn’t particularly fazed by them.

“You need to calm down,“ is all she says.

“It’s my wedding day, and instead of walking down the aisle like I should be, I am stuck to the bathroom door.”

The situation would be laughable, if Skye wasn’t so closed to hysterics. Over the years, Jemma had been witness to her fair share of Skye-related dramatics, but most of the wedding planning had been smooth sailing. Until this.

“I told you that the tulle was a safety hazard,” Jemma responds calmly, trying to maneuver her fingers around the antiquated bathroom door latch that had someone attached itself to Skye’s wedding dress. “Although how you got the skirt skirt caught on a latch that’s shoulder high is beyond me.”

Skye’s only response is to sigh heavily.

“Leo’s going to think I’m a runaway bride. He’s going to think that I don’t love him and I left him at the alter.”

Jemma can’t help but roll her eyes at that.

“Leo Fitz is completely besotted with you. He thinks the sun rises and sets around you. Also, I can see him standing at the other end of the hall. He’s checking his watch, but he doesn’t seem to be panicking. He’s just talking to your brother. It’s almost like he’s used to you getting caught up and running late.”

Jemma’s grateful that the chain on the door is just long enough for her to open in a few inches and peek down the hall. Her reporting seems to be the only thing keeping Skye calm.

“Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain he’s not completely losing faith in me and about to slink out of the church in shame?” 

Jemma’s not exactly sure what’s making her friend act so completely out of character. The Skye is she knows is confident in all things, especially her and Leo’s mutual love. It’s been years since she’s seen Skye this nervous and flighty, and the circumstances are nowhere near as extreme as they were in college. Jemma makes a note not to let wedding stress get to her like this when it’s her turn to walk down the aisle. Of course, she’ll need to be in a relationship for that to happen, and she couldn’t even scrounge up a date to her best friend’s wedding.

Grant, Skye’s older brother, breaks away from her fiancé and strides down the hall. Jemma takes a brief moment to appreciate the way his suit fits across his broad shoulders. If she had know known he was this gorgeous, she would have forced an introduction years ago.

“Any luck?” Skye asks, unable to see that Jemma’s attention has wandered. 

That startles her from her ogling. It seems she wasn’t being a brief as she’d thought.

“Just a moment.” 

She refocuses on inching the white fabric off of the chain, and a moment later she’s freed Skye of her confines.

“Thank god,” the other woman whispers. “Is my makeup okay? I didn’t sweat it all off, did I?”

“You look beautiful,” Jemma reassures her friend.

“Good. Now I’ll stay here while you tell Leo that I have not pulled a Runaway Bride. And then we can get this show on the road.”

That sounds more like the Skye she knows. Jemma swings the bathroom door open, intending to update Leo on exact what delayed them. Instead, she crashes straight into a broad figure clad in a black suit.

Grant Ward.

The collision with his body, which she can’t help but notice is pleasingly solid, nearly sends her reeling backwards into the door she just exited, but his strong arms catcher her by the elbows and pull her back up into a standing position.

“Sorry,” Jemma apologizes. She’s too embarrassed to meet his eyes, so instead she focuses straight ahead on the knot in his skinny black tie.

“Not a problem,” his voice is warm and it relaxes Jemma enough to look up into his dark eyes, which are bright with amusement. “Listen, have you seen my sister? She’s kind of supposed to be getting married right now, and she’s disappeared.”

Jemma lets out a small chuckle at his conspiratorial tone.

“Yes, we had a small dress issue that got us stuck in the restroom, but she’s good to go now. I was just about to tell everyone that we can start the procession.”

“Jemma! I need you to do a onceover and make sure I look decent. Make Grant go tell everyone to start!” Comes Skye’s muffled voice from inside the bathroom.

Grant smiles again. 

“I will do that, then,” he says before turning on his heel and walking back the way her came.

Jemma takes another moment, this time to appreciate his well-formed backside, before Skye’s arm peeks out of the bathroom door and drags her inside. Jemma reassures her friend, for what feels like the hundredth time today, that she looks perfect before taking her spot in the processional.

________________

She walks down the aisle alone, despite being the Maid of Honor. Grant is Leo’s best man, but he’s also giving his sister away. According to Skye, he essentially raised her after their parents died, even though they were taken in by their Aunt Linda and Uncle Richard.J emma knows how much it means to Skye to have her older brother walk her down the aisle, and she also knows how close it came to never happening. 

The wedding goes off without a hitch, and the ride from the church to the reception hall is quick. Jemma spends it chatting with her friend Darcy, a friend from college and Skye’s only other bridesmaid.

When they arrive at the venue, Jemma runs off to see if Skye needs anything before the newlyweds make their grand entrance. She’s spent the last few months up to her neck in Maid of Honor duties, and she’s relieved to spend the rest of the night relaxing. At least Skye delegated the bachelorette party to Darcy, even if Jemma still believes she is perfectly capable of planning a wild night out.

Skye and Leo make their big entrance entrance, looking even more loved up than usual. The buffet dinner goes smoothly, as does the couple’s first dance. Pretty soon, Jemma starts to relax. There’s nothing left for her to worry about. So she heads to the bar for a drink, finally feeling like she’s earned one.

The bar is fairly empty, just the college-aged bartender in her black jacket and the now-familiar form of Grant Ward, his own jacket missing and his tie loosened. He watches her approach, a short glass of brown liquid in one hand and another glass, this one a pleasant pink color and topped with a yellow umbrella, in the other. He holds the glass with the umbrella out to her.

“Strawberry daiquiri?”

“Yes please,” she graciously accepts and downs the whole thing in a few gulps. It immediately triggers a case of brain freeze, which Grant watches with one eyebrow quirked up in amusement.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I will be. That probably wasn’t the best idea but…”

“being Maid of Honor is exhausting,” he finishes for her.

“Yes, but definitely worth it. Everything went off without a hitch. Well, except for the part where Skye’s dress got stuck on the bathroom lock,” she rambles on, a bit nervous.

“I don’t think anyone even remembers,” he reassures her.

There’s a lull in the brief conversation and Jemma panics a bit, trying to find something to say.

“You look well,” she finally comes up with. And immediately regrets. They’ve already moved past that part in the conversation and besides, she’s never actually met him before. For all she knows, this is pale and sickly for him. Only not really. There isn’t a pale or sickly thing about him. She tries to course correct.

“I mean of course you look well. It’s been years since…” Shit. That was pretty much the opposite of where she wanted this conversation to go. In fact, that was number one on her list of things to not to discuss with Grant Ward.

He chokes a little on his drink, but replies with a surprising amount of calm, “since I was tortured and left for dead on the Russian border. I didn’t realize you knew about that.”

Now it’s her turn to curse, if only in her head. She shouldn’t have brought this up. She really shouldn’t have brought this up. But he’s looking at her expectantly and she really should explain how she knows about all of this.

“Well,” she beings, unable to make it sound like she isn’t completely uncomfortable, “when Skye found out your superior officers were taking you off the grid, she didn’t exactly handle it well.”

“Yes, if I recall correctly, she decided to drop out of her last year of college and work on a farm in Argentina.”

“Actually, she started out an as Au Pair in Beijing. The she worked at a hostel in Athens, as a tour guide in Prague, and another hostel in Bath. Argentina is where she was when they found you.”

“Oh.”

“You were gone for two years,” Jemma whispers, “she didn’t take it well. She was hard to get in touch with. I’m actually the one who received the call when they found you.”

She doesn’t bring up the fact that, when they found him, he was nearly dead from both the cold and numerous injuries. She doesn’t mention that man she spoke to on the phone, someone named Coulson, had told her they weren’t sure he would survive his injuries. She doesn’t tell him that the email she sent Skye to let her know her brother was alive garnered the first response she’d had from Skye in two years, aside from quick messages to let her know where she was living. She especially doesn’t mention that the Skye who came back to finish her degree, while Jemma was working on her joint PhDs, was so different from the Skye who left. She manages to at least hold that in.

“God, I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean to bring that up,” she apologizes after yet another silence descends, wishing she could just melt into the bar.

“It’s fine. It’s a big thing. Skye likes to pretend that it didn’t happen, but I’m not blind to how big of a deal it was for her. For me too.”

Jemma nods, because all she can really offer is the reminder that she’s listening.

“But today is about celebrating, not wallowing, and I need you to tell me about Leo’s parents. I know nothing about them and Skye’s convinced that they hate her,” he changes the subject and Jemma’s more than happy to move on.

“Well, I’ve never met them, but Leo swears up and down that she’s just imagining it. Not that it changes anything. She’s still convinced.”

He laughs, and they shed the gloom of the past that had been hanging over them. And just in time for Skye to drop in on the two of them.

“Jemma, can I have a word alone with my brother?” she asks, and of course Jemma gives her that. She takes a brief spin on the dance floor with the groom, who tells her about the sensor robots he’s building to assist on crime scenes. Jemma’s fascinated, and can’t help but think about how great it would be to have some of those in her lab. They spend the next song seated, talking about all the practical applications for these robots, which he’s nicknamed ‘Dwarves.’

Eventually Skye reappears, this time to steal her husband back. Jemma takes a moment to appreciate how content her friend looks, out on the dance floor with her husband. This Skye, the happy one with the boundless enthusiasm, is the one she shared a dorm room with so many years ago. She’s so distracted that she doesn’t even notice Grant Ward has materialized next to her until he’s cleared her throat.

“Jemma,” he breaks her from her reverie, “would you like to dance?”

She knows she’s going to step on his toes, she just knows it. But a dance with a man that gorgeous is worth the risk. So she accepts.

She almost steps on his toes at least three times during their dance, but he manages to step out of the way each time. She can’t help but be impressed.

A slow song comes on and, before she can make an excuse, he’s taken one of her hands in his and wrapped another around her waist. She swallows thickly, but reminds herself that slow dancing is actually easier than dancing to fast song. There are far fewer opportunities to step on her partner’s toes.

“So, what do you think of Leo?” she eventually asks.

“I like him. I’ve always liked him. He’s good for Skye, he really grounds her out. Introducing them was one of my better decisions.”

“Oh right, you’re responsible for that. He works for one of those companies you do security for.”

“He used to. He does freelance work now. I think he has a contract with Stark Industries right now.”

“Excellent, that means I might be able to get my hands on one of those Dwarves.”

As strange as that sentence probably sounds to him, Grant doesn’t say anything. He does, however, pull her just the slightest bit closer. Jemma suppresses a nervous giggle.”

“Enough about Leo Fitz, tell me about yourself. It’s not fair that you know so much about me and I know so little about you.”

“Umm…” 

For a moment, Jemma has forgotten everything about herself. Fortunately, she manages to pull herself together.

“I’m a biochemist. I’ve been working at Bannertech for a couple of years now, and I just got the okay to start my own team for research into brain tissue decay under a variety of circumstances. It’s all very exciting to me, but Skye thinks it’s morbid. She tried to get me to join your security firm when the two of you started it, but she couldn’t find a need for a biochemist, so she finally dropped the subject.”

“I think I remember her mentioning that. She suggested we have you build explosives for some of our security systems, but I told her that was too unpredictable.”

“Oh god, that couldn’t be anything but a disaster.”

They share a laugh over the prospect of security systems that involve highly volatile chemicals, and then Grant continues to ask her more questions about herself. Eventually she manages to turn the conversation back to him and finds out that, in addition to heading up the physical side of Ward Security, he’s training for a triathalon and volunteering at a children’s after school program. He’s in the middle of telling her about an Ethopian restaurant he ate at recently when Skye cuts in.

“No, not you. I already danced with you. I want some time with Jemma,” she insists, when Grant takes her hand. He backs off graciously.

“What’s going on with you and my brother?” Skye is, as usual, straight to the point.

“Nothing, we’re just dancing,” Jemma tries to insist.

“You’ve been ‘just dancing’ for a nearly an hour.”

Jemma has nothing to say to that, and just allows Skye to guide her around the dance floor for a while and then over to where Grant is resting and watching the two of them. Before she hands her back off to Grant she leans over to whisper one last thing in her ear.

“If you marry him we’ll be sisters.”

Jemma is blushing bright red, when Grant takes her hand again. Still, they don’t separate until Skye and Fitz have taken off and the last song has been played.

He leaves with her phone number and firm plans to try out that Ethiopian restaurant.

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion of [this](http://burningletter-.tumblr.com/post/74662932533/ward-x-simmons-au-where-hes-the-best-man-and-shes) three sentence AU I wrote.


End file.
